


Bastogne, Christmas '44

by Ginny_Potter



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bittersweet, Captain America: The First Avenger, Christmas, M/M, Post-Battle of Azzano (Marvel), World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:09:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28288236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginny_Potter/pseuds/Ginny_Potter
Summary: Bucky drops a makeshift package in Steve’s lap. It’s as damp as everything else.“Merry Christmas,” he says.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 13
Kudos: 60





	Bastogne, Christmas '44

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays everyone!
> 
> It's such a weird year. Almost there, though, right?
> 
> For this, I want to thank my betas, [Lillaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillaby) and [Brie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MurphyAT), who are always the sweetest and this stuff wouldn't be half good without them. Any remaining mistake is mine.
> 
> To you all, I really hope that the New Year will only bring good things. 
> 
> Ginny

“I got something for ya.”

Steve raises his gaze from the map he’s studying. It’s damp and muddy and Jim stepped on it by mistake while he was helping Steve pack up last night, but it’s the only one they have. They won’t have new intel until Patton gets it to them but fuck, Steve will keep all the men alive until then if it’s the last thing he does.

“What is it?”

Bucky looks smug.

Steve has no idea how he can look smug. They have been stranded in the snow for days now. There’s no bone in Steve’s body that doesn’t hurt because of the cold. And he has the serum. He cannot even imagine how the others must feel. Everything is fucking wet and it. Won’t. Stop. Snowing. Big flakes, as round and defined as coins. And it’s cold. Freezing cold. They had to stop twice the day before because Dum Dum’s toes were almost black with frostbite. Steve kept them between his thighs until Dum Dum stopped spasming with pain, and not even Dernier dared making jokes.

Bucky drops a makeshift package in Steve’s lap. It’s as damp as everything else.

“Merry Christmas,” he says.

Steve gapes and shifts his gaze from the bundle in his lap to Bucky. He’s still standing, the smile plastered on his chapped lips cutting across his face like a blade. His nose is inflamed and his ears are almost purplish. His dark hair is getting long, curling on his forehead in wet locks.

“Am I the only one who keeps count of the days?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” Steve blurts out. _Yes. I wasn’t expecting_ you _of all people to…_ But of course Bucky counts the days till Christmas. Bucky has a family. Bucky writes them letters. In a couple of months or so, Bucky will receive stale biscuits and challah and yellowed pages that say Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas. Fuck. “It’s Christmas,” he blinks owlishly, realising it all of a sudden.

“Yeah, pal.” Bucky slumps down like a sack of potatoes and nudges him to one side, taking up space.

He’s pressing his right arm against Steve’s left, and Steve can feel his warmth through the thick layers of their uniforms. Well, at least Howard did a good job with that fancy jacket. Bucky’s not cold.

Steve looks down at his lap and the package lying on the map. “Is this a present?” he asks, lamely.

“Next year see if I bring you shopping to Macy’s, you ungrateful brat.”

Steve smirks, elbowing Bucky, who elbows him back. They start pushing and prodding and brawling like two kids in a back alley. After Bucky pinches his earlobe nastily, Steve calls uncle because screw James Barnes, he can be vicious. That’s what growing up with three sisters makes you; nasty and vicious and full of dirty tricks to win fights.

“You are a pansy.”

“Fuck you,” Steve bites back, unoriginally, as he starts unwrapping the lumpy cocoon. Turns out, the wrapping is nothing but one of Bucky’s old stinky socks, threadbare and more mud and dirt and unsalvageable holes than anything else by now, and Steve shrieks indignantly – in an absolutely manly way – when he realises it.

“Just look inside, schmuck.”

Steve shakes the lump a bit, and after a second a couple of objects fall into his palm. One is undoubtedly a makeshift cigarette. He saw and made plenty in the last year, so he definitely knows what he has in front of his eyes. It’s probably more shit than tobacco, but beggars can’t be choosers, especially the poor wretches left in Bastogne. The Howling Commandos were just supposed to boost the morale of the 1st battalion. However, Steve understood almost immediately that they had to move quicker if they wanted to reach who really needed them. They lost part of the unit they were supposed to flank on day two, when Steve decided to bend the orders a little bit to lighten the burden of the 101st Airborne.

And so here they are, stuck defending Bastogne.

They ran out of their rations more than a week ago, so Bucky must have saved this particular cigarette only to give it to him. Steve gulps through a lump in his throat. These days anything makes his eyes water, fuck it. It must be the bombs. Fucking von Lüttwitz. Who the hell attacks on Christmas Eve? He blinks and sniffs, wiping his nose on the back of his glove in the vain hope that Bucky hasn’t noticed.

Bucky clicks his tongue and Steve throws him a quick look. He wiggles his eyebrows and mouths, _Crybaby_.

Steve flips him off.

In doing so, the second object, the weird one, almost falls in the snow.

“Hey! Pay attention, I slaved for that.”

“What the hell is this?”

Bucky elbows him again and Steve grunts, before focusing his attention on the strange knick-knack. It’s sort of a weird device, something that wouldn’t be out of place in Stark’s lab in London. Steve has no idea what it could be. He juggles it in his hands.

“Did you make it?” he asks, making an effort to not smile fondly. 

Bucky’s always had an affinity for mechanics. Howard’s eyes twinkle every time he sees him. _Barnes, here, ‘s a kindred soul_ , he calls him. Bucky rolls his eyes, but there’s affection there, and even some flustered sense of flattery. 

_Who knows_ , Steve thinks. _Maybe once all this ends, maybe Stark will offer Bucky a job._

“No, I found it growing on a tree,” Bucky deadpans.

“You’re hilarious, Barnes.”

“Use that beautiful brain of yours, Rogers.”

Steve feels his cheeks heat up, and for the first time in the last month he is happy that his skin is constantly chilblained by the frozen air and not even the serum can heal it fast enough. He clears his throat and tries to concentrate. It’s hard when his ears are still ringing from yesterday’s bombing, but hey, one makes do.

“Two bullets,” he says.

Bucky hums, noncommittal.

“Garand.”

“I taught you well.”

Steve chuckles, thinking about Bucky’s lessons in weaponry the first night after the liberation of Kreischberg. He needed to keep his mind off… stuff. _Stuff,_ he called it. So he proceeded to explain basic stuff to Steve, like how a gun works, how you field strip a rifle in less than four minutes, how you throw a grenade without losing a hand. All things Steve already knew – he went to basic, kinda – but stuff, _this_ … _stuff_ at least, that Bucky felt he had control over. So Steve just let him teach, that night, red-rimmed eyes and shaky voice. He let him.

He blinks quickly, going back to examining the trinket.

“This is the chain of a hand grenade. Nice touch, Buck.”

Bucky looks downward, smugness taking over his features again and for a split-second Steve remembers the bedroom eyes he used to make at all the girls in the neighborhood and how they swooned at his feet like freshly cut flowers every time he looked at them through his long lashes. So long and so dark; Steve found himself sketching them hundreds of times in a vain attempt to recreate that particular expression.

Steve’s heart starts beating faster. He clears his throat, going back to examining the device. He flicks up his thumb, and suddenly he notices that one of the two bullets has a strange appendix. It’s removable, like a cap. It dangles from the hand grenade chain when Steve uncaps it.

It’s…

“Is this a wick?”

Finally, Bucky grins openly, so wide that his mangled lower lip splits, but he doesn’t even notice. “You’re almost there, Sherlock.”

Steve blinks and then it comes to him. “You made a lighter.”

Bucky laughs, smug and satisfied, and Steve is filled with happiness at Bucky’s childlike joy. Something that they need. God, do they need it.

“Bucky, this is swell.” Steve can’t help but give him a grin to match.

“Thank you!” Bucky opens his arms, as if particularly vindicated by the fact that Steve recognised his genius.

Steve wonders if he showed the guys, if they were sceptical.

“When did you make it?” Steve twists and turns the lighter in his hands, warmth filling him all over.

It’s so good to see Bucky smile, it’s so so good.

“Ah you know, between freezing my ass off and shooting Krauts.”

He says it light-heartedly, one hand running through his damp hair, pushing it back in the same way he used to with his fingers covered in Brylcreem before a night out. The longer locks curl behind his ears. There’s something in his easiness though, something dark that makes Steve’s stomach clench.

_Not now._

“Wanna share it?” He lifts the cigarette that Bucky saved for him and takes off one glove to hold the lighter better. The frost stings his skin like a thousand pins, like angry bees at picnics.

Bucky doesn’t seem surprised by the offer. “The spirit of Christmas,” he exhales dramatically. “Sharing with your loved ones and all that jazz.” He pauses, then covers his heart with both his hands and bats his eyelashes furiously. “You are a good Christian, Captain America,” he chirps in an awful falsetto.

Steve rolls his eyes and steps on Bucky’s boot, making him squeal in outrage.

“I’m changin’ my mind,” Steve mumbles, ears red and stomach clenching uncomfortably again.

He knows that Bucky’s joking. He knows it. But it feels weird, somehow, for Bucky... because of what he represents, his past, what he was before… before all the shitshow, before the serum and Doctor Erskine and… Bucky was there when nobody else was, when Steve was just… _Steve_. So, yeah, it feels weird for Bucky to use that title, that fake name, that stage name, that comic book name, to talk to him.

“Cut the crap and light that cigarette, Stevie.”

One sentence and he is back to reality. His mind stops spinning in circles, dragging him down. Steve feels his heart miss a beat. He looks at Bucky and he glances back at him with his eyebrows raised as if to say, _What?_

“You haven’t called me that in a while,” Steve whispers, and he’s ashamed of how small, how self-deprecating, how borderline needy his voice sounds.

Bucky hesitates a second before shrugging and looking away. “Cm’on, before your fingers fall off. I need a smoke.”

Steve feels the rough friction of the sparkwheel under his thumb. It takes a couple of attempts, but Bucky’s knick-knack works; the spark gleams once, twice, and finally a small flame trembles at the top of the wick. Steve lights the butt without hesitating. It’s still too damn damp to miss the chance. The rancid smell of whatever is inside of it is almost comforting as Steve takes in a mouthful of sour smoke. He coughs a couple of times before passing the cigarette to Bucky. It’s gross but it’s damn satisfying.

And most of all, it’s familiar.

It’s familiar, seeing Bucky smoking. Steve remembers lazy evenings perched on the fire escape of their Brooklyn tenement, smoking and listening to the music coming from the apartment facing theirs, before Bucky managed to buy his folks a new radio with his savings and brought home their old one. He remembers the hot concrete of the Barnes’ roof, on July 4th after July 4th, smoking and watching fireworks and Bucky’s raspy voice singing “Happy Birthday.” He remembers Bucky taking a break from sunbathing to huddle under the pier at Coney Island, his skin red even in the shadows, and holding his faithful Lucky Strike between index and middle finger. He remembers Sundays just before mass, Bucky in his Sunday best, hat and all, meeting his eyes in the mirror with a cigarette dangling from his lips.

Steve’s pretty sure he spent hours – days, weeks - drawing Bucky smoking. He knows that there are tons of sketches of him crouching, cigarette in a hand, eyelids heavy and mouth ajar, smoke swiftly slipping from his cupid’s bow lips.

Something wild claws at Steve’s insides and it has nothing to do with his guilt complex.

They share the cigarette in silence until it’s consumed and the still burning butt scorches their fingertips.

When it’s done, Steve turns towards Bucky to thank him, to say Merry Christmas, to apologise for forgetting about it and about Hanukkah and about a million other things that… But when he turns his head to speak, Bucky is so close, and his eyes are as grey as the winter sky and as blue as the frozen ponds of the forest that surrounds Bastogne. They look at each other and the words die on Steve’s lips.

He remembers lazy evenings perched on the fire escape of their Brooklyn tenement, smoking and listening to the music coming from the apartment facing theirs and stepping on Bucky’s toes in the desperate attempt to learn to dance and Bucky dipping him and… and… He remembers the hot concrete of the Barnes roof, on July 4th after July 4th, smoking and watching the fireworks and Bucky’s raspy voice singing “Happy Birthday” as he traced his way down, down, down… He remembers Bucky taking a break from sunbathing to huddle under the pier at Coney Island, skin red even in the shadows, and holding his faithful Lucky Strike between index and middle finger, then nodding discretely towards the most secluded area… He remembers mornings just before mass, Bucky in his Sunday best, hat and all, meeting his eyes in the mirror with a cigarette dangling from his lips. And later, Bucky’s ma asking _Why weren’t you in church today, boys?_

Bucky leans in and presses his open mouth against Steve’s, wet and hot like summer in New York. Smoke fills Steve’s mouth and makes his eyes water and his throat spasm. It _burns_. But Bucky doesn’t allow him to cough, to pull back, to take a breath, and Steve chokes on the kiss, head spinning and hands grasping at Bucky’s too long hair, damp locks tangling in thick fingers. They crash against each other. They fall into each other. They collapse like burnt buildings. Implode.

It’s violent and quick and unforgiving. Steve gasps, airsuddenly flowing in, when Bucky pulls back, wiping his mouth against the back of his glove. He stands. He doesn’t even falter.

For a second, Steve thinks he imagined it.

“Keep that close, ok?” Bucky says, voice rough, nodding towards the lighter. “I’ll see if I can snatch some cigarettes from some dead Kraut tomorrow.”

Steve blinks and nods dumbly. “You and the guys trying to breach to the 6th Cavalry?”

Bucky shrugs with one shoulder. “Captain’s orders.” He sinks his hands in the pockets of his blue jacket and walks backwards for a couple of yards, eyes on Steve, grey and blue and… But then, finally, he turns on his heels, his back to Steve.

Steve looks at him, hunched over, his rifle dangling from his shoulder like a third limb.

“Buck!” he calls out, just a second before Bucky turns the corner. He stops, looks over his shoulder.

“Merry Christmas,” Steve whispers.

Bucky raises the corner of his lip and nods. “Merry Christmas, Stevie.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Here](https://www.facebook.com/458626201364488/posts/829942610899510/?d=n)'s the pic of the lighter which inspired this.


End file.
